1 Kings 16:29

"And in the thirty and eighth year of Asa king of Judah began Ahab the son of Omri to reign over Israel: and Ahab the son of Omri reigned over Israel in Samaria twenty and two years. And Ahab the son of Omri did that which was evil in the sight of Jehovah above all that were before him. And it came to pass, as if it had been a light thing for him to walk in the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, that he took to wife Jezebel the daughter of Ethbaal king of the Sidonians, and went and served Baal, and worshipped him. And he reared up an altar for Baal in the house of Baal, which he had built in Samaria. And Ahab made the Asherah; and Ahab did yet more to provoke Jehovah, the God of Israel, to anger than all the kings of Israel that went before him."

During the reign of the wicked Ahab and his evil wife Jezebel, the true religion of God almost succumbed to the pagan worship of Baal. Not only did the horrible infection threaten the existence of Israel, but Judah was also contaminated; and, except for the magnificent efforts of the great prophet Elijah the Tishbite, the cause of Truth might have been lost. These terrible chapters that conclude the first book of Kings spell out the details of that conflict.

During the reign of Ahab, the worship of Baal was officially installed as the national religion of Israel, but to guard against the triumph of that deadly virus, God raise up Elijah the Tishbite. "He was the most powerful of the prophets, and he worked mightily upon the formation of the spiritual life of the nation and the ultimate fate of Israel."[20] The remarkable deeds of that mighty prophet will dominate the remaining chapters of 1Kings,

"In some ways, that conflict between Ahab and Jezebel on the one hand and Elijah upon the other was the crucial hour for the worship of Jehovah. The king and queen of Israel would have wiped it from the face of the earth if they had been able to do so; but Elijah was able, by the blessing of God to stem the evil tide."[21]

The name of Baal was connected with several kinds of paganism, but Gates tells that "The god of Jezebel was Melkarth the Baal of Tyre. He was the kind of god who required the burning of innocent little children at the oblations upon his altar. He was believed to be the lord of the land; and to induce him to send rain upon the earth, fertility cult practices were engaged in and sacrifices were offered."[22] Jezebel had been reared in a pagan home, and there might be some excuse for her worship of Baal, but for Ahab, his motivation was not due to ignorance but to his consummate wickedness. Thus, within the space of about forty years, Jeroboam's golden bulls were fully revealed for what they were all the time, namely, PAGAN IDOLS, and nothing else!

Ralph W. Sockman has an interesting paragraph describing the evil that characterized Israel at this time:

"Sin often has the aspects of a flood. Evil thoughts and practices keep falling like rain in the minds of sinful men. Tributaries pour their muddy waters into the social mind. The dams of restraint give way. The flood rises with frightening and unbelievable rapidity, engulfing the unsuspecting and sleeping victims. In the kings and people of Israel from Solomon on, the evil gathered momentum, until in the reigns of Omri and Ahab there came the flood."[23]